


Of Bullets, Booze, and Teddy Bears

by CelticGrace



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, single parent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-28 13:44:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7642891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelticGrace/pseuds/CelticGrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Still adjusting to life post-Blue Suns, Zaeed's life is turned upside down once again by the news that he's a father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Bioware owns Mass Effect, its universe, and all characters within; if you don't recognize a character, it's probably mine.
> 
> Thanks to my lovely betas, pixelatrix and MizDirected
> 
> Also thank you to my followers on tumblr and members of the MEFFW group on Facebook for your encouragement and help.
> 
> Summary, tags, and relationship tags subject to be deleted/added to as the story progresses.

_ 2165 - Somewhere on the edge of the Skyllian Verge _

As a bullet pierced his skull with an earsplitting crack, Zaeed Massani wondered exactly where he’d gone wrong in life.  He’d been no saint, that was for goddamn sure, but he hadn’t been a devil either.  That title had gone to his ex-partner, who’d already begun walking away before Zaeed had hit the pavement.

He decided that had been his big mistake: partnering with Vido Santiago in the first place.  Granted, they'd had a good run, five years running the Blue Suns.  And then Vido had… changed.  

No, that wasn’t it.  He hadn’t just up and changed all of a sudden.  He’d always been a greedy bastard, so Zaeed knew he really should have seen it coming long before he did. Long before Vido had walked into their shared office one morning, declaring that the Blue Suns were hiring batarians, effective immediately.

Zaeed had argued against it even though he'd known he’d lose the fight, right from the beginning.  He’d been in charge of the men, but Vido was in charge of the coin and in the end, that was all that goddamn mattered, the coin.  That was all that ever mattered to Vido.  The bastard didn’t give a toss about who lived or died as long as he got paid.

The sound of echoing footsteps in the alley brought Zaeed sharply back to the present.  He opened his one good eye just enough to see a flash of purple hurry over to where he lay.  

“Oh you fucking idiot, what’d you get yourself into now?” a familiar female voice murmured as surprisingly gentle fingers poked and prodded at his head, apparently assessing the damage.

_ Bloody perfect _ , Zaeed thought.  That was all he needed, completely at the mercy of that goddamn asari.  If he made it out of this, he knew he’d never live down the story of how Aria T’Loak had saved his worthless hide.

* * *

_ One Year Later - Omega Space Station _

Zaeed collapsed fully-clothed onto his bed, too exhausted to even kick off his boots.  Being rescued by the Pirate Queen of Omega came with massive strings; Aria had run him ragged, forcing him to work damn near around the clock from the moment his doctor had declared him fit enough.  But finally,  _ finally _ , he had a few hours to breathe, and more importantly, sleep.

Or so he thought.

Zaeed had known Aria long enough to realize that she wasn’t really going to give him a goddamn moment’s peace.  He’d just drifted into a restless sleep when some goddamn ingrate started banging on the front door of his tiny flat.  Grumbling about bloody interfering asari and having less than zero privacy, Zaeed stumbled out of bed and into the front room.  He punched open the lock on the door without so much as a glance at the security monitor.  At the moment, he didn’t give a fuck who it was, they were going to goddamn die.

“ _ What _ ?” Zaeed snarled as the door slid open.  “What the bloody  _ hell _ could she possibly want now?”

The turian standing in front of him, one of Aria’s personal guard, seemed impervious to his tirade, not surprising considering the number of times Aria yelled at her lackeys in a given day.  Zaeed waited for him to speak, but he said nothing, instead fiddling with something on his omni-tool for a moment before a holographic image of their boss erupted from his wrist.

“A package just arrived for you, Massani,” the asari said in an almost bored voice.  “It’s… fragile.”

Zaeed crossed his arms and glared at her.  “And you had to send one of your minions to deliver the message?  I do have an omni-tool myself, y’know.”

“Of course you do, sweetie.  But the way you looked when you left here -”

“Only fifteen goddamn minutes ago.”

She rolled her eyes and continued, “- I knew you weren’t likely to answer a message, no matter what it said, unless it was delivered by someone knocking your fucking door down.”

“What’s so bloody special about this thing that it can’t wait a few hours?”

She paused, apparently for dramatic effect.  “It’s alive.”

Zaeed’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline.  “Come again?”

“Just get your ass down here and deal with it,” Aria snapped before severing the connection.

“You know anything about this?” Zaeed asked his companion as they made the short trek back to Afterlife.

The turian shook his head slightly and they continued on in silence.  They bypassed the main floor of the club and went on to Aria’s private quarters, where they found her sitting on her couch, feigning disinterest as her daughter Liselle sat in the middle of the floor, playing with a human infant.

The turian bodyguard saluted Aria and made a hasty exit while Zaeed stood just inside the doorway, too shocked to speak.

“Isn’t she  _ adorable _ ?” Liselle cooed as the baby giggled.  “Wonder who her mother is.”

Zaeed finally composed himself enough to ask, “And you assume I’m her father?  Is that why you dragged me down here in the middle of night?”

“She’s got your eyes,” Liselle said before her mother could respond. “And the note was addressed to you.”

“Eh?” 

“It was in there.” Aria gestured toward a crate a few feet away, a dingy green and pink blanket nestled inside, before she tossed a datapad to him.

Zaeed glanced at the baby once more before he unlocked the very short, unsigned note on the datapad:

> _ Thought it'd be fun having a kid around. It's not. She's your problem now. Don't try to find me. _

Liselle jumped in surprise and the baby started wailing as Zaeed snapped the datapad in half in anger.  He supposed the kid was lucky her bitch of a mother had had sense enough to drop her off with Aria instead of leaving her somewhere the vorcha might get to her.  He shuddered at the thought of what those savages would do to an infant of  _ any _ species, much less a human.

“Well?” Aria asked.  “Is she yours?”

“How the bloody hell should I know?” Zaeed replied bracingly.  “Do I look like a goddamn doctor?”

“You’d have been a hell of a lot less trouble this last year if you were.”

“I didn’t ask you to pick me up,” he snapped.  “You could have -”

“Will you two shut the hell up?” Liselle hissed, glaring at them both as she walked circles around the room, gently bouncing the baby.  “You’re scaring her!”

Zaeed ran a shaky hand along the stubble on his jaw.  There was no denying the baby looked like him, in as much as babies looked like  _ anyone _ ; at least they shared the same dark green eyes - eye in his case - and dark brown hair.  

“So what are you going to do with her?” Aria asked, breaking into his thoughts.

He scowled.  “I’m not doing a damn thing with her until I know she’s mine.”

“I can help with that,” a soft voice said from the doorway.

Zaeed’s scowl deepened as the speaker stepped into the room.  There were few people he trusted, and despite the fact that she’d saved his life, Sophie Warner certainly wasn’t one of them.  It wasn’t entirely her fault anyway.  He didn’t trust doctors in general, never had.  

Still, he needed answers and she was the only one who could give them.

“What d’you need to figure this out?” he asked through gritted teeth.  He might need her but he didn’t have to be happy about it.

She rolled her eyes at his tone and proceeded to ignore his question while she joined Liselle in fawning over the infant.  “She certainly looks like you, Massani.”

“Yes, we’ve established that, Sophie,” he growled.  

“Temper, temper.”

“Sophie…”

“A pinprick to draw blood,” she said without looking at him.  “It’ll be painless, I promise.”

“What’s going to happen to her if she’s  _ not _ Zaeed’s?” Liselle asked suddenly, looking distressed as she hugged the baby tighter.  

The looks exchanged around the room said no one had thought of that, though from her still-bored expression, Aria still didn’t seem to care all that much.  “Why don’t you find out first and then decide?” she drawled.  “In any case, the faster you get this over with, the faster you people can get the hell out of my apartment!”

“Mother!” Liselle glared at her.  “How can you not care?”

Aria shrugged.  “Just like this.”

“So?” Zaeed glanced at Sophie.  “Let’s do this.”

She nodded and took the baby from a reluctant Liselle.  “I can do the test right here.  Just a couple of quick pricks and then we wait.”

“How long?”

“Ten minutes.”

_ Longest ten minutes of my life _ , Zaeed thought to himself as Sophie took a blood sample from him and one from the baby.  Regardless of the outcome, he really wished it wasn’t all happening in the middle of Aria’s living room.  He could feel her eyes boring into him as they waited.  

“You got something to say, Aria, just fucking say it!” he growled without looking toward her.

She huffed a quiet laugh.  “I was just wondering what kind of woman would be so incredibly desperate to get rid of her kid, she’d leave it with a man like you.”

He’d been wondering the same thing himself, but said nothing.  He honestly couldn’t remember who the woman might be, but that wasn’t surprising; he’d had trouble remembering  _ anything _ from the months before he’d been shot.  

He turned to Sophie, who was pacing the room with the baby.  “How old is she?”

She shrugged.  “No way to know for sure, of course, but since her eyes have changed color, she’s at least 6 months old.”  She stopped pacing as an alarm went off.  “Time to learn your fate, little one.”

Zaeed knew Sophie was taking great pleasure in torturing him as she read the results but said nothing for what felt like an eternity. “Well?” he growled impatiently.  “What’s it say?”

“Congratulations!” She grinned broadly and held the infant out to him. “Zaeed, you  _ are _ the father!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kudos and all the lovely comments :D
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy!

Zaeed and the baby blinked at each other for several seconds and then she opened her mouth and began screaming again. He looked helplessly at Sophie, who seemed to be trying to hold back a fit of giggles.

“We’ll help you,” Liselle said, coming over and showing Zaeed the proper way to hold a baby. “Well, I will anyway. Sophie seems hellbent on seeing you suffer, and Mother…”

Aria merely rolled her eyes and picked up a stack of datapads. Now that the excitement of the moment had worn off, she seemed even less interested than she had in the first place.

“Of course I’ll help,” Sophie said as she recovered some of her composure. “First of all, she’s going to need a name.”

Zaeed stared at her blankly. “A name.”

“You could just keep calling her the baby, but that seems unnecessarily cruel.”

“Smartass.” He already knew what he’d name her. “Aderyn,” he said after a moment’s pause. “For my mother.”

He and Aria both rolled their eyes when Sophie and Liselle looked at each other and squealed. “That is so sweet!” the younger asari said.

“All right, I think that’s my cue to leave,” Zaeed grumbled. “I’m not sticking around for all this cuddly shit.”

“I’ll go with you,” Sophie said, failing in her attempt to suppress another giggle. “I’ve got some supplies you can use ‘til you can get your own.”

“Supplies?”

“You can’t possibly be this thick, Massani,” Aria said without looking up from the data pad she was reading.

“Bite me, Aria,” Zaeed growled. “My brain’s gone to mush, all right? In case you’ve forgotten, I haven’t had a bloody night’s sleep in I can’t think how long.”

She snorted. “You think you’ll be getting any sleep from now on, you’re fucking delusional.”

The sarcastic response he’d meant to give came out as a wide yawn instead and he found himself being herded from the apartment by a still-giggling Sophie.

“Why is this so bloody amusing to you, woman?” he muttered as they made their way through Afterlife. He held Aderyn tight against his chest to shield her from the drunken crowds.

Sophie shook her head and said nothing until they were outside the club and climbing into a skycar. “It’s just… the thought of big badass Zaeed Massani, with a baby.”

He found the idea more ludicrous than humorous, but said nothing. It wasn’t until hours later, as he stretched out in his battered old recliner, his daughter asleep on his chest, that the reality of the situation really set in. And the sheer panic.

He didn’t know a goddamn thing about being a father. He’d never known his, run off before he was born, his mother had said. She’d raised him alone until she’d died just before his 13th birthday. He’d skipped out on the orphanage not long after he’d arrived – knowing no one adopted kids, particularly boys, over the age of six – and run with a group of street kids until he’d joined the Alliance on his 17th birthday.

That’s when he’d met Vido; they’d become fast friends, bonding over endless bottles of whiskey and more time spent in the brig than not. Not long after the First Contact War, they’d both been “persuaded” to leave the Alliance; they’d wandered from job to job for a few years before they’d formed the Blue Suns.

Zaeed forced himself out of his memories; no good would come from continuing to dwell on the past right now. At the moment, he had more important things to think and worry about.

Aderyn stirred briefly but didn’t wake, for which he was thankful. Now he was in the chair and settled, there wasn’t a damn thing that would move him, at least for the next couple of hours.

And yet the gods seemed to be laughing at his determination; the moment he’d closed his eyes, his omni-tool lit up and vibrated against his wrist.

Zaeed swore under his breath as he shifted Aderyn in order to answer the hail. If it was Aria again, he wouldn’t be bloody responsible for what he did next.

It was Sophie.

_Not any goddamn better._

“This had better be bloody important, woman,” he snapped, answering her hail only because he knew she wouldn’t stop until he did.

"Well, hello to you, grumpy.” She sounded far too cheerful for it being before the goddamn crack of dawn. “I just wanted to see how you and your bundle of joy were doing.”

Zaeed rolled his eyes. “G’night, Sophie,” he grumbled and disconnected the chat. He silenced his omni-tool and tossed it onto a nearby table before he settled back into the chair and prayed for silence.

Unfortunately, his “little bundle of joy” chose that moment to wake up, and started screaming. He’d never heard anything so loud, even the times she’d cried while they’d been at Aria’s. If Aderyn hadn’t been directly in his line of sight, Zaeed would have sworn she was being tortured.

He launched out of the chair and began pacing the floor as he’d seen Liselle do. He even tried bouncing a bit, all the while feeling exceptionally foolish.

When nothing else worked, in a fit of desperation, he retrieved his omni-tool and dialed Sophie back.

“Help me.” He loathed even thinking the words, much less saying them out loud, but he didn’t know what else to do. He'd have preferred asking Liselle for help, but didn't want to risk having to deal with Aria again.

“What’s that? I didn’t quite hear you.”

He growled when she giggled again; he didn’t want to give in to her teasing, but repeated the request, each word ground out between clenched teeth. “Help. Me.”

Sophie grinned. “That’s what I thought you said. This is quite a day, isn’t it? First Zaeed Massani finds out he’s a dad, and then he actually asks for help!”

“Sophie…”

She held up a hand. “Sorry, I have to savor this. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

“Sophie...”

“We should make this a holi–”

“SOPHIE!”

She stopped giggling and stared at him unblinking, while Aderyn momentarily stopped wailing. He’d have to work on not raising his voice; he didn’t want to traumatize his daughter, anymore than she’d be just by being his kid in the first place.

He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly before he spoke again. “Sophie, I realize you think this is a bloody joke, and to be honest, it feels like someone’s playing one hell of a cruel prank on me with all this, but I need you to focus. You are a goddamn doctor after all. You’re supposed to help people, yes?”

“Sorry.”

“You can laugh at me all you want, after you help me stop the screaming.”

“Zaeed?”

“Yes?”

“She stopped screaming.”

He glanced at Aderyn in surprise. He’d been so intent on getting Sophie’s attention back to the problem at hand, he’d failed to notice his daughter hadn’t resumed her wailing and was now happily chewing on the collar of his shirt.

“You said you’d tried everything?” Sophie asked, clearly trying not to giggle again. “You didn’t try a pacifier or teething ring, did you?”

Zaeed rolled his eyes. “No, I didn’t.”

Sophie grinned. “So can I start teasing you again, now that I’ve solved your problem?”

“Maybe later. G’night. Again.”

“Wait!”

“What?”

Sophie hesitated a moment before she asked, “What are you going to do with Aderyn when Her Royal Bitchiness summons you to work again?”

_Shit_. He hadn’t thought of that. He shook his head slightly. “Not a bloody clue.” He raised an eyebrow. “Why d’you ask?”

Sophie shrugged. “If you’ve got no one else, I could do it.”

“No.”

“Why the hell not? You don’t trust anyone else, Zaeed.”

“I don’t trust _you_ , Sophie."

“What did I ever do to make you not trust me?”

“You went to medical school, for starters.”

She snorted. “And if I hadn’t, you’d be dead right now. And Aderyn would probably be varren chow.”

An involuntary shudder ran through him. “Please don’t put that image in my head.”

“Just think about it.”

“I’d rather –”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “Not the varren, idiot. My offer to watch Aderyn.”

Zaeed nodded slightly. “All right, Sophie. I’ll think about it.”

“Great!” She smiled brightly. “‘Night!”

"Yeah." He sighed deeply. “What’s left of it.”


End file.
